I wouldn’t be surprised that once his book is written we all find out that his jab was a fishing expedition, intended possibly to formulate an opinion about how Atheist respond to bad press. Time Magazine probably holds his publishing contract and can’t say anything bad, for whatever (legal?) reasons.

TheG

He’s shown such a lack of both empathy and morals that it is more likely that he will try to whitewash his BS with more BS (like, “HA! I was just playing everyone to prove a different point!”)

SciFiCahill

Sadly, if you read Time on a weekly basis, you’ll find the news “isn’t” news…it’s “opinion” about the news…coming from a predictable angle that is tiresome after being on the Internet and seeing what the “real” story is. So, the fact that they don’t admit their mistakes, or caution their writers…it’s just part of the “la-la land news blanket” they offer – keeping their readers safe from reality!

Artor

I can see him making that claim, but I won’t buy it. Joke Line has a history of this shit.

C Peterson

Is TIME anti-atheist? Maybe, maybe not. Most news outlets are biased, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We often choose our primary sources because of their biases.

But bias is something we should see reflected in things like the choice of stories, or the viewpoints represented. For it to show up in factual errors is crude. That it should show up in a failure to retract indisputably false claims is crude. Yes, these things can be seen to reflect a bias. But more than that, they demonstrate outright journalistic incompetence.

Klein is obviously incompetent. He has no business on any forum except some little unread blog somewhere. Bad journalists slip through to major publications, of course. Unfortunate, but that’s the way of things. But TIME itself? No excuse. Then again, it’s riding on the name and reputation of what it used to be. The very medium is represents is fading away. It’s hardly surprising that it can’t find competent managers and editors. Seriously, what qualified, ambitious journalist or editor would choose a news publication dependent on stapled together sheets of paper sent out by snail mail? Crazy!

http://squeakysoapbox.com/ Rich Wilson

We need to get these properly transcribed. Google does a half decent job with your talking Hemant, but it does have have secular humanist groups not delivering “hot cardinals”.

If America is anti-atheist (the case is strong for that) then why would we surprised that TIME would be also. I think the Joe Klein thing is fucked up and I have cancelled my subscription and written a number of letters, but maybe it should serve for us to recognize how distrusted we are in this country and set about on some plan to remedy this problem. There have been a number of efforts in that direction lately, but we need more – more people coming out, more social gatherings, more outreach etc. We shouldn’t have to do it but we do if we want our veiwpoint to be more understood and accepted.

http://parkandbark.wordpress.com/ Houndentenor

it’s very common for people to repeat things that are “conventional wisdom” that aren’t always actually true. Think how many urban legend type things you’ve been told all your life that have no basis in fact. In other cases something might have been true at one time but isn’t true any longer. At one time publications employed fact-checkers who would go through pieces line by line and do their best to make sure all the facts were correct. Now that such checking is easier than ever, they don’t bother with that at all. I don’t know that it’s bias on Joe Klein’s part as it is laziness and and a willingness to regurgitate what he’s heard others say without bothering to check to see if it’s actually true. That’s still not a very good excuse for either Klein or Time Magazine, but it is an epidemic in today’s media culture.

C Peterson

I guess it’s the same approach used by software developers. They used to test their code and release it when it was solid. Now they just call it all “beta” and let their customers find the bugs for them. And too many journalists do the same with their stories.

somebody beat me to it. Joke Line has been a joke line for, shit, over a decade now, if one is reading the political blogs. someone put an asshole where his mouth should be years ago. listening to him is like rafting down a river of shit and expecting to find the water lily patch along the way to take in the smell.

baal

Salon is a mixed bag. They have posted a number of pieces from Alternet that were pro-atheist. And then they have MEW who flip flips on her support. And then they have anti-atheist pieces.